Saturday, November 07, 2009

Quietly Changing Their Mind

I wasn't sure if the agreement we brokered to pretend to allow Zelaya to return to power (because the Honduran parliament will never approve it) was really a victory for democracy. I feared Zelaya and his thug allies in Latin America would bully their way back into power in Honduras.

But it looks like this might be a win for the good guys:

When the U.S. last week finally brokered a deal between ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya and the man who replaced him following the June 28 coup, de facto President Roberto Micheletti, observers wondered how the Obama Administration had won Micheletti's agreement. That's because the pact allowed for Zelaya to be restored to office before Honduras' Nov. 29 presidential election - a prospect Micheletti had fiercely opposed. But as the dust settles, the more common question this week is, What was Zelaya thinking when he signed this accord?

The Oct. 30 agreement, in fact, leaves it to the Honduran congress to decide whether the leftist Zelaya should be restored before the presidential vote (in which he's not a candidate). But Zelaya, still holed up in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa since sneaking back into the country from exile in September, appears to have grossly miscalculated the odds of the legislature voting in his favor, and that leaves a cloud of uncertainty hanging over the accord. On Friday, Zelaya told Radio Globo that the accord was "dead," adding that there was "no sense in deceiving Hondurans."


I was sure shocked that the apparent poison pill for Zelaya would appear a good deal to him. I wondered if I was missing something given our long support for Zelaya in the so-called coup.

I guess not. Congratulations to the Obama administration for reversing course and supporting the good guys. I'm horrified it took so long to do the right thing, but they did.

And no, I won't insist on the administration admitting error as Bush opponents demanded every time the loyal opposition charged he made a mistake.